ar that Eleanor had forgotten her
presence altogether, and would not rouse herself from her reverie until
it was time for their train to go. "Oh, dear! what a pity it is that we
cannot change our identities! To stay in a big house with people is just
what I should like to do, and I believe you would really like staying at
Windy Gap and having Italian and singing lessons all day long with an
Italian lady."

"Really like," said Eleanor; "that is a mild way of putting it. Why,
there is nothing that I should like better, provided, of course, that the
Italian lady is a good teacher."

"Oh, yes, I believe she is a good enough teacher. If I recollect aright
what my grandfather said to me on the subject, she used to be an opera
singer herself once some years ago, but her health broke down and she
had to leave the stage. Her name is Madame Martelli."

Scarcely had the last word left her lips than Eleanor, straightening
herself with a sudden jerk, gazed with eyes that fairly blazed with
excitement at Margaret.

"Martelli!" she exclaimed incredulously. "Not Margherita Martelli!"

"Yes, I am quite sure that was the name, because I thought at the time
how very much prettier the Italian way of saying Margaret was than the
English. Do you not think so also?"

But Eleanor brushed the inquiry aside as though she had not heard it.

"And to think," she muttered, more to herself than to Margaret, "that she
is going to have lessons from Martelli."

"But why not?" said Margaret in a puzzled tone. "Is she not nice? Is she
not a good teacher?"

"Nice! A good teacher! Have you never heard of Margherita Martelli?"
Eleanor ejaculated in a tone of such unbounded amazement that Margaret
began to blush for her own ignorance, and it was in a shame-faced voice
that she owned that until the other day when her grandfather had told her
that she was to have lessons from a Madame Martelli she had never heard
the name.

"Oh, well," said Eleanor, calming down and laughing at her own
impetuosity, "now I come to think of it, I was just as ignorant a few
months ago, but I was reading the autobiography of a great concert
director the other day and in it he speaks of Margherita Martelli and the
brief but wonderful career she had. She only sang for two or three years,
and had scored triumph after triumph when a sudden illness deprived her
of her voice, and she vanished from the stage as suddenly as she had come
on to it. I had no idea that she lived in